You take the Desert Express for 50 chips and find yourself in the "Out in the Desert" container document. While there, you're limited. You can cast spells, sure, but if you want to change equipment, you need to spend another 50 chips to get back to Somerset. If you want to use the Hospital, or go to Jitterspout, you'd need to go back to Somerset, then hop on a different bus to the university or to downtown.

The biggest problem I see is a player who spends his last 50 chips getting to the desert and then immediately croaks. Potentially, you could be stranded there. This would probably be solved by forcing players to buy round trip tickets, so it'd be 100 up front.

Of course, I imagine this would be a nightmare to code.

_________________The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone--October Project: "Dark Time"

Yeah. I've thought seriously about using some sort of location enforcement--you have to pay to go each way, or even the time to patrol in an area could change to include the distance traveled--but yeah, nightmare to code is right. I have enough trouble with the simple distance restrictions and locking people in/out of the maze. (And I get a hefty number of comments/complaints about what is/isn't realistic to be able to do while you're locked in or locked out.) Trying to do that on a more global scale would take a lot of time and effort.

And, from the player perspective, I think it would add a complication that just isn't really that satisfying. Or it would be far more annoying than enjoyable. So I'd rather spare folks the trouble, and spare myself the trouble at the same time.

On the bright side, the need to avoid this "practical" restriction has given me cause to work on a little bit of science fiction storyline that I think people will enjoy.